Topic: Talking To Your Appliances ?s

[mikey]

What is your fav admin tool?
What is your most used admin tool?

As expected, my answer is the same for both and has been for many years; Tunnelier

One of my pet peeves is all the folks that think they can handle sensitive data with a hosting account that doesn't even include shell access. In addition to the basic fact that no shell = no sec, they transfer files and PWs in the clear(plain text) over FTP and then wonder why their stuff gets stolen. If you're not using an SFTP bridge or SCP, your transfer can be captured.

[Samker]

Mike, did you ever tried Ipswitch's "WS_FTP Pro": http://www.ipswitchft.com/Products/Ws_Ftp_Pro/

[mikey]

I was actually thinking that someone might read the Bitvise articles and want to discuss things like building your own VPN or tunneling/port forwarding for any purpose.

WS_FTP?

WS_FTP is IMO a tool for 'webmasters' with limited resources and limited abilities...not for an 'admin'. Sorry, JMO.

Anyway, if anyone reads the Bitvise papers, I'll be happy to discuss all aspects of using these tools.

Personally, even tho we use the DC/server farm and tools for our intranet portals, the Bitvise tools(especially using the command console) have been the backbone for support on all the networking I manage for many years now(both nix and win). When I hear the words 'remote control' or 'command and control', I think SSH and Bitvise regardless of what additional RC/CnC tools are added to the mix.

Trivia; When thinking about RC/CnC tools, I think that it is funny that the majority of the tools loaded and often used at my admin station are actually targeted by anti-malware scanners. Just another reason to avoid signature scanners.